Descripción del proyecto
Descifrar el mecanismo de la esterilidad en las hormigas
Un fenómeno comúnmente observado, pero no explicado, en las colonias de insectos sociales es la esterilidad de las castas de obreras. Hasta ahora, la pérdida de la capacidad de reproducción se ha explicado mediante la hipótesis de la monogamia dominante —es decir, la transmisión indirecta de los genes— o mediante la hipótesis de la imposición de la cooperación a través de la vigilancia. El equipo del proyecto AntPolice, financiado con fondos europeos, estudiará las circunstancias que condicionan la esterilidad de las hormigas obreras y llegará a una conclusión sobre la hipótesis más probable. Esta investigación se llevará a cabo aplicando un pionero análisis comparativo filogenético entre cientos de especies de hormigas con novedosos experimentos en laboratorio con la hormiga socialmente polimorfa «Formica exsecta».
Objetivo
The sterile worker castes found in the colonies of social insects are often cited as archetypal examples of altruism in nature. The challenge is to explain why losing the ability to reproduce has evolved as a superior strategy for transmitting genes into future generations. The leading explanation for the evolution of worker sterility is the monogamy hypothesis. The idea is that workers don't need to reproduce because they can transmit their genes indirectly by improving the reproductive success of the queen, who carries the same genes. For this to work, the queen should be monogamously mated, ensuring workers are raising full siblings, the genetic equivalent of their own young (r = 0.5). There has been no appropriate test of this hypothesis, however, and an alternative hypothesis, that worker sterility evolved via the enforcement of cooperation by policing, has not been ruled out. According to the policing hypothesis, workers suppress each other's reproduction by eating each other’s eggs or through aggression, leading to sterility through evolutionary time. Crucially, policing is predicted to evolve when relatedness is low, in contrast to the monogamy hypothesis.
Here, I propose an interdisciplinary approach that combines a cutting-edge phylogenetic comparative analysis across ~500 ant species with novel lab-based experiments on the socially polymorphic ant, Formica exsecta, to test between the low and high relatedness evolutionary pathways to worker sterility. Contrary to common belief, workers in most ant species can lay eggs due to their haplodiploid sex determination system, making them an ideal system for answering this question. This project will fill a crucial gap in our knowledge of how complex life on Earth evolved and potentially overturn the long-held hypothesis that high relatedness is the only route to cooperation.
Ámbito científico
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinador
90014 Oulu
Finlandia